For this week’s WSC, I didn’t really know where to start. I hadn’t looked at poetry since my GCSEs, so I decided to start with the most renowned National English poets and go from there. Initially I briefly broke down three options:
1. William Blake – The sick rose
2. William Wordsworth – I wondered as a lonely cloud
3. William Shakespeare – The phoenix and the turtle
And as you can tell from the title of this blog entry, I went with ‘The Phoenix and The Turtle’. by William Shakespeare. It stood out more than the others to me, as I felt it had more options in terms of interpretation and wanted to see how my interpretation of the poem would effect the typographical response. In addition to this, the poem is one of Shakespeare’s least known, which makes it a bit more of a challenge and more interesting.
I gave myself a few excerpt options to chose from, after finding out the modern equivalent to most of the words and imagining each section visually I decided to go with option 3:
Hearts remote, yet not asunder;
Distance and no space was seen
‘Twixt this Turtle and his queen:
But in them it were a wonder.
So between them love did shine
That the Turtle saw his right
Flaming in the Phoenix’ sight:
Either was the other’s mine.
Now to dig a bit deeper and find out a bit more of people’s interpretation and history of the poem, remembering this is a design course, not an English one, let’s keep it short and sweet.
It would seem the basis of the poem is still very much unsolved. But the main framework is about a turtle dove and Phoenix, who are lovers, ‘though their physical bodies are miles away, they are united in the soul.’ The poem sets the scene at the funeral of the lovers as they have died together in flames, before flicking back to discuss their intense love, finishing with a funeral song. One interpretation of the poem is said to be of Queen Elizabeth I and the Second Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux. Which is an overarching interpretation, of which many theories stem from this in regards to an intense love affair between the two, bringing in war, social, politics and other factors.(Bachelorandmaster.com. n.d.)
In terms of the poems layout, there are 7 syllables per line. Which gives a chant-like effect to the poem, one of which Shakespeare is not famous for. Forcing a break at the end of every line, it add a funeral drumbeat, slowing the poem down somewhat. (McDonald, C. 2019). This is worth knowing as a potential visual element to work with throughout this week’s WSC.
Things to consider from interpretations and language used:
Lovers, birds, mythical creature, Phoenix, turtle dove, queen, loyal, fidelity, hierarchy, funeral, death, intense love, died together, soul, spirit, become one, unit, funeral, particular attendance, bitter sweet.
First stages of exploring the first sentence with type, clarifying the message and portrayal of this. With the poem being from Shakespeare’s era, I feel a serif is more suited, as well as it being a serious matter about love, accepted or not is obviously unknown but still a very serious love.
A sans serif could be an exploration of a modern day twist of the poem, however the traditional aspect of it seems more considered and purposeful. I’ve also added some hand written style typefaces. The reason for this is that in Shakespeare’s era, everything was hand written and love notes seemed to be a common thing. The hand written element could add personalisation of the relationship between the two. However, how a hand written typeface will work when changing it’s form, type and leading I’m unsure at this point how successful it may be. For next steps, I will be focusing on serif fonts and hand written to portray the basis of the message.
Initial exploration of type below using Big Calson Medium for now. Focusing on the words remote for distance / little connection and asunder meaning apart, but the sentence as a whole is explaining how they are not apart, so some word play with this too. I thought about bringing colour in but at these early stages I think sticking to black and white is more logical, if the message is portrayed well through black, colour can potentially be a positive or negative with enhancement.
I wanted to try Caslon Pro so I had more of a range in terms of weights to see how these could potentially enhance meaning and message. I really like the idea of a small element of hand written type to give it that personal effect. I think it’s important to stress the ‘remote’, the fact these lovers had distance between them, whether this was physically or metaphorically. Asunder is in the sentence of ‘not apart’, so I want to try experiments where the word is ‘apart’, to it’s true meaning, but also where it doesn’t look apart, it looks close to enhance the whole last bit of the sentence. Asunder being hand written is based around the whole love letter aspect I mentioned earlier, maybe that’s the only way they didn’t feel apart?
Starting to add some slight colour into the mix to see how it contrasts. Using red for the stereotypical colours of a Phoenix, turtle doves are white so this could be based on the background – however, later on I may invert some of the colours to see the effects or moods it can help portray.
As much as a I am enjoying the digital experimentation with fonts, I want to try some hand rendered tests / experiments quickly. Not confident in how they will turn out as I know how difficult it is to make a typeface, but worth a go! If these seem to have potentially, and time depending I may develop this into creating a full typeface myself. I used Calligraphr as a quick font builder which I recommend to my own students, this is great for a quick test, but in terms of baselines, x heights, etc doesn’t give the most precise result. I used my natural hand writing to try mimic the love letter style, however I think for the era the hand writing was a lot more cursive and sophisticated.
Had to change the kerning and tracking on this quite a lot to try have them ‘joined together’
I managed to find some old letter press letters in the depths of my work and an ink pad, although not the proper technique, I still wanted to trial how it would turn out, very happy with the results, regardless of the message communicated I think some of these look really effective, plus it was an enjoyable experiment overall.
So I tried creating my own hand written style of asunder to link with the love letter theme using ink and giving myself a rough baseline and x height with it not being a full typeface. I don’t have a steady hand at all, so this didn’t work create at the scale. I took it digital to see if it changed the appearance much, not really. Then I thought by the time I redraw it digitally using the original as a trace, it’s probably going to look very similar to ones already accessible.
At this point I’m still a bit unsure whether to have ‘asunder’ showing the true meaning of apart, or have it close to work with the whole sentence suggesting the lovers aren’t apart. But I have some options I’d like to play around with from initial experiments, as well as combining these with the hand letter pressed type I made earlier.
One thing I have discovered from these experiments is when you ask opinions of which typography piece expresses the meaning most, it is very much down to personal interpretation, as I got a range of favourites, not making my decision making any easier. Going to try type setting the body copy with the first line on a few experiments to see if this helps make a design stand out as the one to go with. Working with the idea of ‘no space was seen’ – to showcase how close the lovers felt. Thought about doing something based around the metaphor of the lovers being birds, but felt this would become too complicated and distract from the real concept of the poem.
With some of these experiments it was the struggle of separating ‘oh that looks visually appealing’ and ‘oh, that doesn’t actual read how it’s meant to though’. As in not the correct order, or format.
Felt the original Asunder didn’t read well, so tried some different layouts for this. Found it quite tricky to create a clear format. I really wanted to try use some of the printed letters as they look lovely, but not sure if they portray the message intended. Meaning over personal appreciation at this point I think.
REFERENCES:
Bachelorandmaster.com. (n.d.). The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Summary and Analysis. [online] Available at: https://www.bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/the-phoenix-and-the-turtle.html#.XKC-3etKhmA [Accessed 31 Mar. 2019].
McDonald, C. (2019). What is the meaning behind the poem, ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ by William Shakespeare?. [online] Quora.com. Available at: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-meaning-behind-the-poem-The-Phoenix-and-the-Turtle-by-William-Shakespeare [Accessed 31 Mar. 2019].
lucyjtranter.wordpress.com 